THE revelation came early yesterday morning on Bethpage Black’s fifth hole. It came with all the subtlety of a Roger Clemens fastball flush on the funny bone.

Tiger Woods pulled a 2-iron from his bag, striped it down the middle of the fairway, walked to his ball, pulled a 7-iron out and casually stiffed his approach shot to the middle of the green.

The fifth hole at Bethpage Black is a sweat-inducing 451-yard par 4 that requires some 250 yards off the tee to carry massive waste bunkering and then a perfectly placed approach shot to a well-bunkered elevated green that’s tucked behind trees.

In other words, it’s a double or triple bogey in waiting to the rest of the golf-playing free world.

Even to the world’s best players competing at the U.S. Open, No. 5 figures to produce its share of headaches this week.

But Woods’ behavior on the hole – 2-iron, 7-iron to the green – was a blatant slap in the face to every hacker who’s spent the night in his Chevy Malibu Classic at the Bethpage parking lot to secure a tee time.

It, too, was a sure signal that Woods is en route to winning the second leg of the true Grand Slam.

That’s right, the 2002 U.S. Open is an open-and-shut case before first balls are struck tomorrow.

While the world’s best players have been staggering, one by one, off the 18th green calling this the toughest U.S. Open layout they’ve ever seen, Woods was loping around the front nine yesterday without a worry in the world.

Quite simply, it looked too easy for Woods as he played an 18-hole practice round yesterday, plotting his strategy in front of swelling, Sunday-like galleries.

Woods struck his first tee shot at 7 a.m., a smooth 2 iron to the middle of the first fairway.

On No. 2, he hit 2-iron off the tee and then stuck a wedge to within three feet of the hole.

On No. 3, a 205-yard par-3, he hit what he described as a “little 5” effortlessly to the green.

On the 9th hole, Woods wowed the crowd. A moment after Adam Scott crushed a driver around the dogleg left and was hearing it from the crowd, Woods, clearly not wanting to be outdone, creamed his drive some 35 yards past Scott’s effort, leaving the crowds stammering as he flipped his driver to caddie Steve Williams.

His second shot to the 418-yard hole was a half wedge to within four feet of the flag.

Through the front nine, I’d seen enough evidence that convinced me that nobody’s going to beat Woods as long as he’s hitting his tee shots to the fairway and making a mere handful of putts.

When Woods navigated his way through the tougher back nine with little incident, it only forged my belief.

Most players don’t keep score during a practice round, but having witnessed this one first-hand, I can attest that this one was well under par.

“I’m pretty comfortable with every facet of my game right now,” Woods said.

That, quite simply, cannot be good news for the other 155 players in the field this week.

“Of course he’s going to be one of the guys to beat, but I think this course is going to make Tiger hit more drivers . . . and we’ll see how he’s hitting the driver,” Sergio Garcia said.

Pssst, Sergio. Woods was almost flawless off the tee yesterday and he hit only six drivers in the round – on Nos. 4, 9, 10, 12, 13 and 16.

The latest attempt to knock Woods off his pedestal has been a statistic dredged up that he’s 0-for-8 on par-70 courses (which Bethpage Black is).

To that, Phil Mickelson, one of Woods’ strongest competitors this week, said, “That’s kind of stretching it a little bit, isn’t it?”

The bottom line is this: Based on the way Woods is playing right now, there isn’t a player in the field that’s going to beat him.